controlaccess: Relevant Subjects in Archives and Related Fields 2017-12-31

This is the weekly roundup of headlines in and around archives, including some library, museum, digital humanities, and information science things as well. If you see something we’ve missed, please email us!

SAA News

Nexus “Leading Across Boundaries” Resources Now Available

November 5-7, 2017, Council Meeting Minutes Now Available!

Read the Fall/Winter 2017 Issue of The American Archivist!

Early-Bird Registration for Arrangement and Description courses
See course information here and here. The deadline for the early bird rate is December 31.

Nominate someone for an award!
The deadline for nominations is February 28.

Year in the Life: Adriana Flores, Pt. 12

Adriana Flores is one of our participants in our Year in the Life series, which follows new archivists in their first professional position. This is Adriana’s final post of the series. You can read her previous posts here. If you’d like to contribute to our Year in the Life series, please contact us!

I can’t believe that this is my last post for A Year in the Life!! It seems like yesterday that Lauren Gaylord reached out to me in December to ask if I’d be interested in contributing. I’m so happy I said yes and that I’ve been able to share and reflect on the last year of my professional life with all of you. My life has changed a fair bit over the last year and writing for SNAP has allowed me to document those changes along the way.

controlaccess: Relevant Subjects in Archives and Related Fields 2017-12-10

This is the weekly roundup of headlines in and around archives, including some library, museum, digital humanities, and information science things as well. If you see something we’ve missed, please email us!

SAA News

Urge Congress to Save Historic Tax Credit and Oppose Taxes on Graduate Education

SAA Urges FCC to Preserve Existing Net Neutrality Provisions

Ballot Set for 2018 SAA Election

Volunteer to Serve on an SAA Appointed Group
Submit your application by January 19!

2018 SAA Research Forum Call for Participants and Presentations
Abstracts for poster and platform presentations due May 15.

Available Now: Archival Continuing Education (ACE) Guidelines – 2017 Revision

Year in the Life: Elizabeth Shulman, Pt. 8

Elizabeth Shulman is one of our participants in our Year in the Life series, which follows new archivists in their first professional position. We will be following Elizabeth for a year. You can read her previous posts here.

Earlier this month, I attended a day-and-a-half Local History Librarian conference hosted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The conference was generously sponsored by the North Caroliniana Society which made it free to all attendees. As soon as I learned about the conference through the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center’s partners list-serv, I knew I had to attend. I figured this was at the very least a good way to meet colleagues doing similar work from across the state. The majority of attendees work for public library systems across North Carolina.

The vast majority of the speakers either worked at Wilson Library at UNC or worked for the state government at either the State Library or State Archives. The first two sessions were the type of work being done at Wilson Library and the state agencies. The third was an open forum for participants to discuss their collections and ask questions of other librarians in the room. The question we spent the most time discussing was “How do I get more people to learn about and use my collection?” I ended up talking about my Archival Petting Zoo as well as my efforts to promote the collection on social media. That wrapped up the morning. In the afternoon there were sessions about demographic of users in North Carolina, conservation (which is a struggle for us public librarians), state-level grant applications, and free North Carolina oriented reference resources. The last session was particularly interesting to me as I learned about several digital map resources. I have been getting a lot of map questions lately so it was definitely a helpful resource I’ve passed along to my patrons. The first day of the conference ended with a lovely dinner at the Carolina Inn and a dinner talk about the story food can tell in the archives by the head of the American Studies department at UNC.

Year in the Life: Adriana Flores, Pt. 11

Adriana Flores is one of our participants in our Year in the Life series, which follows new archivists in their first professional position. We will be following Adriana for a year. You can read her previous posts here.

As we near the end of the semester, life in the Archives & Special Collections has (thankfully) begun to slow down. Although the students’ schedules are as busy as ever, our office is finally getting a chance to regroup and work on some new projects. With less classes and special events, we’ve been able to focus on preparing for some large projects this spring, revisiting our policies and procedures, and checking in with our students on their projects. Overall, it’s been great to have less events and more unstructured time to work on things that have had to wait on the back burner for a bit.

Chat with Us Tonight, November 20th

Are you a current archival student or new professional? Please join the SAA Students and New Archives Professionals Section for the next #snaprt Twitter chat on November 20, 2017 at 8 pm ET. This will be the first in a series focused on Archival Fundamentals as outlined by SAA. For this first chat we will revisit appraisal principals!

We welcome everyone to join or keep up with our chat using the #snaprt hashtags on Twitter. The SNAP Section Twitter account will pose questions such as:

• What are/were some of your biggest fears when faced with appraisal decisions?
• What are some methods you can use to improve your selection decisions?
• What unique challenges are presented when appraising digital records?
• Are you familiar with macro appraisal? In what ways does this theory change traditional appraisal practices?
• What is the most important thing to remember when making appraisal decisions?

controlaccess: Relevant Subjects in Archives and Related Fields 2017-11-19

This is the weekly roundup of headlines in and around archives, including some library, museum, digital humanities, and information science things as well. If you see something we’ve missed, please email us!

SAA News

Join our next #snaprt chat November 20th at 8pm ET!
This will be the first in a series focused on Archival Fundamentals as outlined by SAA. For this first chat we will revisit appraisal principals!

185 Education Session and 20 Poster Proposals were submitted for ARCHIVES * RECORDS 2018
Proposers will be notified of the Committee’s decisions in late January.

The November/December Issue of Archival Outlook Is Here!

Call for Volunteers: SAA Tragedy Response Initiative Task Force
If you are interested in serving, please complete the Task Force Volunteer form by Wednesday, December 6

#snaprt Chat Flashback: Finding a Job

For the November 9, 2017 #snaprt chat we discussed the professional job search. Thank you to everyone who participated and shared their tips and experience! You can read our Wakelet recap here.

Here some resources that got tweeted out:

• Elusive Archives Job Blog
• SLA/CUA Cover Letter and Resume Workshop
• Interview Questions Repository
• Archives Gig Blog
• I Need A Library Job Website
• Article: Why Women Don’t Apply for Jobs (HBR)

And check out articles on the SNAP Blog about job hunting and employment:

• Landing a Job in a Business Archives
• [Ask an Archivist]: How valuable is an online presence during a job hunt?
• [Ask an Archivist]: How to Handle the Expected Salary Range Question on Applications
• Persistence and Perspicacity: Lessons I Learned on the Archival Job Hunt
• Advice from a Seasoned Archivist, Pt. 3
• Managing Your Career: One Archivist’s Journey, Pt. 2
• Rocking the Phone Interview
• The Application Process: Keywords and Addressing the Requirements in the Job Advertisement

Check out our next SNAP Chat on 11/20 about appraisal!

[Ask a Business Archivist]: How Do You Build Your Collection?

This is the seventh post in a collaborative series with the Business Archives Section. You can read all posts from this series here. Have a SNAP-related question for the archivists? Check out our anonymous submission form here.

Ask a Business Archivist Question:

To what extent do you actively seek out particular records to include in your collection? To what extent do particular business records just come to you as a part of a business’s activities? What is your role in building your collection? I guess I’m trying to tease out differences between records management and business archives. I’m a grad student still early on in my program, and am curious about the distinction between various archival roles.

Chat with Us Tonight, November 9th

Are you an LIS student or recent graduate on the job hunt or preparing for it in the near future? Are you a new or experienced archivist with insights to share from your experience as an applicant or on a search committee? Please join the SAA Students and New Archives Professionals Section for our November 9th #snaprt Twitter chat about the experience of embarking on the professional job hunt for the first time.

For our chat on embarking of the professional job hunt on November 9 at 8 PM ET, we will pose questions such as:

• What is the best piece of advice you’ve received regarding job applications?
• What qualities do you look for in a job? Why are they important to you?
• What have you found to be the most valuable resources in the job hunt (people, websites, or anything else)?
• What is the experience of working on applications like? What types of things do you struggle with?
• What aspects of your resume do you think have helped you the most?

[Ask a Business Archivist]: How Does Working at a Religious Institution Change Archival Thinking?

This is the sixth post in a collaborative series with the Business Archives Section. You can read all posts from this series here. Have a SNAP-related question for the archivists? Check out our anonymous submission form here.

Ask a Business Archivist Question:

For archivists at religious institutions, in your work you must be exposed to the religious and philosophical tenants of your institution (even if those tenants aren’t your own). Have those principles inspired you to re-consider a part of archival thinking in any way?

Year in the Life: Adriana Flores, Pt. 10

Adriana Flores is one of our participants in our Year in the Life series, which follows new archivists in their first professional position. We will be following Adriana for a year. You can read her previous posts here.

October has brought colder weather, changing leaves, and a busy college campus! The Archives & Special Collections has been bustling with plenty of classes, new projects, and special events. One of the biggest events we had this month was Homecoming and Family Weekend. The A&SC hosted an open house as part of the weekend’s program and it was wonderful to contribute to the campus festivities as both a staff member and an alumna.

Our office was contacted by the University Relations department in August about participating in Homecoming and Family Weekend. The archives has participated for the last few years in one capacity or another, so I was excited to maintain our department’s involvement. For the open house, we decided to use our reading room and small classroom to display a variety of significant campus records, memorabilia, and rare books. Laura, our Assistant Archivist, and I wanted to make sure to align our displayed materials with the rest of the weekend. This year Homecoming and Family weekend was honoring multiple groups: the Black Student Union’s 50^th anniversary, the class of 1967’s football team, and the ‘Green & Gold’ era athletics members. Focusing on these groups allowed us to narrow the scope of our display and really connect with the alums who would be visiting us.

[Ask a Business Archivist]: How Do You Convey the Importance of the Archive?

This is the fifth post in a collaborative series with the Business Archives Section. You can read all posts from this series here. Have a SNAP-related question for the archivists? Check out our anonymous submission form here.

Ask a Business Archivist Question:

How do you convey the importance of the archive (and your job!) to superiors and colleagues, especially in times of financial crisis or decline?

Landing a Job in a Business Archives

Guest Author: Jamie Martin, IBM Corporate Archivist, IBM Corporation

When I was asked to write this blog, I immediately thought, “What do I wish I knew then, that I know now?” (For one, learning how to archive a giant 1950s mainframe would have been helpful). As with many corporate archivists, I stumbled into business archives. As a new grad, I always assumed I’d end up in academia or a historical society. I just wanted a job—any job—and I took the opportunity as a Processing Archivist Contractor for a large corporation. Eleven years later, I’m now managing a different corporate repository, and I love what I do. However, I’ve found that even a decade later, not many students or new archivists are familiar with the concept of business archives.

Year in the Life: Elizabeth Shulman, Pt. 7

Elizabeth Shulman is one of our participants in our Year in the Life series, which follows new archivists in their first professional position. We will be following Elizabeth for a year. You can read her previous posts here.

Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, I can officially share that the North Carolina Collection has a new head of its collection. I have been wanting to write about the process of hiring the new head but decided to wait until it was actually official. As I said in an earlier post, the North Carolina Collection has been without a head since November 2016, or two weeks after I started working there. I have been filling the shoes of a vacant head for the past year and keeping the collection afloat through its move to the mall but I am relieved that someone will soon take over the helm. The new head starts in early December.